I set up photographic still lifes or closely cropped nature shots that are carefully arranged, but somehow fraught—both over-specific and elusive. I’m drawn to situations where control is confounded by dysfunction and studied elegance is poised precariously on the verge of the absurd. The well-placed non sequitur, self-consciousness, and slyly humorous formal affectations are ongoing preoccupations.

My subject matter could be almost anything—a cat staring at bowls of milk, a badly placed brooch on a sweater, a cheese morsel fallen on a couch. I tend to use whatever’s close at hand, so autobiographical allusions inevitably sneak in. I’m not interested in forcing any particular narrative; I’m more interested in a sensibility that runs through the work: low-level despair, boredom, resignation, thwarted desire, overwrought sensuality, utter futility. I tend to push that with the titles. I’m going for the rigor of minimalist design, the angst of an existential one-act, and the humor of a Chaplinesque slip on a banana peel. Think Charlie Brown meets Robert Mapplethorpe.